Wairarapa Butter.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2049, 30 March 1887, Page 2

Wairarapa Butter.

lo the Editor of the Standard,

3 ik, —I am glad to see in your issue of the 21st inst., your article on oar butter supply. It is high time that the subject was brought forward, to know the reason the small farmers do uot get a better price from the stores for their butter. There is something radically wrong somewhere, either the storekeeper or the producer is to blame. I fancy both hare something to answer for. In the first place a great many of our dairymen do not pay sufficient attention to the cleanliness and temperature of their dairies. They forget that to produce good butter it requires greater care than any other article. Butter during the hot wea> ther should be made early in the morning and taken at once to the stores and not kept three or four days in a hot dairy because no one happens to be going to the township; also as Batter Worker says, “ Let him churn three times a week during summer.” As it is now—the storekeeper takes any butter he can get because Mr So and So is a dealer at bis store. 1 have seen piles of this butter of all qualities in back sheda of some of the stores waiting to be mixed up and sent to Wellington (or to be salted down) all in a liquid state, no cool chamber or any convenient place to keep it in. How can we expect that butter kept in this way can command a good price r The producer only gets about 5d a pound, the storekeeper informing him that butter is unsaleable —in fact be is a loser by the transaction. Now to show the difference, what good butter sent direct brought this summer. Thera arc two dairies I know of in this district (and most likely there arc more) that make butter on a large scale and send it direct to Wellington ; they have never realised less than uinepence a pound all through this season ; so this proves that without we, smaller butter makers follow the advice given in your article in establishing small dairy factories throughout the country we shall never command a fair price for our batter. The cost of starting a butter factory with a cream separator and an engine of two horse power (if water power is not available) would be from £250 to £3OO. A Cheese Factory will cost £IOOO. I am more iu favor of the butter making, as you can get the skim milk back sweet for the oelves and pigs. 1 am also informed that if a number of factories cooperate iino make up thirty tons for export, they can procure a cooling chamber on board the steamers which srill enable butter or cheese to be eeot lo the borne market* in saleable eon* ilitiou. I trust otheis will take op inis matter and give their opinions, I am, &c., Bittkb Pvoorcis. Carterton, March 2D, Ibb'.